Halliburton Hunting For Missing Radioactive Probe In West Texas

09/13/2012 06:08 pm ET

Bloomberg

Halliburton Co. (HAL) is scouring a 130- mile swath of West Texas oil fields for a lost seven-inch cylinder with radioactive material used when drilling natural- gas wells by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

Pickup trucks outfitted with detection gear retraced the route of a vehicle that carried the radioactive rod before it was reported missing on Sept. 11, the Houston-based company told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The trucks drove at 10 miles an hour between Pecos, where the device was previously used on a well, and Odessa without finding the unit, according to an NRC incident report today.